Origin Story Program Notes

Concert info: https://philharmonianw.org/origin-story/

Here we are at the beginning. Of Philharmonia Northwest’s 2024-25 Season, yes, but also at the start of Dr. Michael Wheatley’s tenure as Music Director. The title of today’s concert, “Origin Story,” alludes to these beginnings and to the origins of Maestro Wheatley’s interests as a conductor, curator, and performer. The pieces programmed for today each have a backstory for Michael and have helped shape the conductor and musical thinker he is today. From pieces he first encountered as a young violinist or budding conductor, to works that speak in a specific tonal language he is drawn to, these four works provide splendid and varied listening, and are a small window into the musical mind of the conductor we will spend many hours with in the coming season, and beyond.

Wojciech Kilar: Orawa

I cannot think of a more fitting work to start a concert season than Wojciech Kilar’s Orawa. From its opening rhythmic figures, which have the sense of the start of a journey, the work enchants us with insistent joy and optimism. Since its premiere in 1986, Orawa has been one of Kilar’s most performed concert works, perhaps even more so than his popular film scores, the most well-known of which was composed for Francis Ford Coppola’s 1992 adaptation of Bram Stoker’s Dracula. The style we are exposed to in Orawa is typically referred to as post-minimalism, a favorite of Maestro Wheatley’s and one often employed in film scores because of its tendency to make use of a pared down harmonic language, rhythmic approaches with a strong sense of pulse, and melody shapes that lean toward the singable. We experience all of this and more in Orawa and I encourage you to give yourself over to the journey of the piece and embody the rhythmic shifts. Kilar himself said of Orawa that it was “one of the rare examples where I’ve been happy with my work.”

Antonín Dvořák: Romance in F minor, Op. 11 and Maurice Ravel: Tzigane

A special attribute Michael Wheatley brings to the podium is his background as a concert violinist. Having performed with orchestras, as soloist, and in chamber ensembles, Michael brings a deep and personal understanding of string repertoire to his programming choices. In today’s concert we have two well-known works, both of which feature virtuosic violin playing within the context of fascinating compositions, each with diverse approaches to orchestration.

Dvořák’s Romance in F minor was first played by Maestro Wheatley in a version for violin and piano at a recital he gave in his 20s, before the call of his first major conducting appointment. It is easy to see the attraction of this charming and stirring work for both listeners and violinists alike as its one-movement structure and graceful melodies make for easy listening. The orchestral version, which was first performed in 1877, is a marvelous balancing act of emotion and technique, with each needing the other to achieve the sublime state the listener enters by the end of the work. I draw your attention in the orchestration to the ways the winds, particularly the clarinets, engage in call-and-response with the soloist, as if we are listening into a conversation between friends.

Where Dvořák’s Romance reaches the sublime by finding balance, Maurice Ravel’s Tzigane achieves the same through ecstatic virtuosity. From the opening extended solo, we are drawn into a sound world that is driven by the violin’s uncanny ability to beckon. First performed in 1924, Ravel referred to the work as “a virtuoso piece in the style of a Hungarian rhapsody,” and the harmonic language does make use of scales and chords typically associated with folk music traditions of Eastern Europe. In a conversation with Maestro Wheatley earlier this year, he expressed his deep love for Ravel’s orchestration in Tzigane, particularly the masterful accompaniment in the harp, the wind and brass punctuations that seem to prod the solo violin in its quest for new heights, and the ethereal tone color of the celeste. In both the Dvořák and Ravel, we are joined today by the Seattle Symphony Orchestra’s Principal Second Violinist, Elisa Barston, whose renowned technical prowess and lyrical playing are a perfect choice for these two cherished pieces in the violin’s extensive repertoire.

Gustav Mahler: Symphony No. 4 in G major

When we attend an orchestral concert, we enter the experience with several expectations. We might expect an acoustically rich concert hall, as an example, or excellent musicianship from members of the orchestra. We also expect that the music programmed is worthy to be listened to, perhaps even a canonical masterpiece. With Mahler’s Symphony No. 4, we certainly have that, but it was not always the case. The premiere of the symphony in 1901, with Mahler himself conducting, was met with negative audience and critical response, as were subsequent tours of the work in Europe and America. Though Mahler was a well-regarded composer by the time he composed his Fourth Symphony, the work’s effusive forms, unorthodox orchestration, and quiet complexity, did not impress listeners as much as his previous symphonies. It was not until many revisions later and a Japanese recording in the 1930s that the symphony began to be accepted for the masterwork that it is. In the end, many music historians now believe Mahler’s Fourth Symphony to be one of his most accessible and part of what has led to his enduring legacy.

“I first conducted Mahler’s Fourth Symphony at the age of 37 and have always been taken by its modesty, compared to his other symphonies, and the unique orchestration including the absence of low brass, which is so prominent in his other music,” offers Maestro Wheatley. Indeed, the absence of low brass allows the orchestration a nimble quality, able to shape-shift quickly and easily while still retaining a sense of gravitas. While the symphony is in four movements, listeners will sense unity across all of them due to the recycling of themes and motifs, a brilliant move by Mahler to create a sense of cohesion in a 50+ minute work.

The final movement brings us great beauty but also great intrigue. While the inclusion of voices was not unknown in a symphony by the time Mahler composed his Fourth (think Beethoven’s Ninth), incorporating a song for solo voice and orchestra, especially as the finale, was unconventional at best and risky for certain. The text itself is anonymous, drawn from a collection of German folk poetry Mahler often turned to for inspiration as he felt these poems were closer to nature and true human experience than more literary works. The poem Mahler chose is from the perspective of a child who imagines what heaven will be like:

We revel in heavenly pleasures,

Leaving all that is earthly behind us.

No worldly turmoil

Is heard in heaven;

We all live in sweetest peace.

We lead an angelic existence,

And so we are perfectly happy.

We dance and leap,

And skip and sing;

Saint Peter in Heaven looks on.

When Maestro Wheatley comments that he finds Mahler’s Symphony No. 4 as a work of modesty, it may be most apparent in the final moments of the fourth movement. One could forgive the first listeners of the work in 1901 for being confused by this ending as it slides away almost imperceptibly, as if Mahler gave up on a more convincing conclusion. Yet nothing could be further from the truth. If we listen through the lens of modesty, as Michael has encouraged us to, it is in this humility that we experience contentment and joy. The final words sung by our soloist today, the wonderful soprano Ellaina Lewis, help us sense Mahler’s true intentions, and foreshadow the eight concerts ahead in Philharmonia Northwest’s season:

There is just no music on earth

that can compare to ours.

Cecilia and all her relations

make excellent court musicians.

The angelic voices

gladden our senses,

so that all awaken for joy.

James Falzone
Dean and Professor of Music
Cornish College of the Arts